Shelby Foote

Shelby Dade Foote Jr. (November 17, 1916 – June 27, 2005) was an American writer and journalist. Although he primarily viewed himself as a novelist, he is now best known for his authorship of The Civil War: A Narrative, a three-volume history of the American Civil War.

With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the Old South to the Civil Rights era of the New South. Foote was little known to the general public until his appearance in Ken Burns's PBS documentary The Civil War in 1990, where he introduced a generation of Americans to a war that he believed was "central to all our lives."

Foote did all his writing by hand with a nib pen, later transcribing the result into a typewritten copy. While Foote's work was mostly well-received during his lifetime, it has been criticized by professional historians and academics in the 21st century.

Foote was born in Greenville, Mississippi, the son of Shelby Dade Foote and his wife Lillian (née Rosenstock). Foote's paternal grandfather, Huger Lee Foote (1854–1915) was a planter who gambled away most of his assets. His paternal great-grandfather was Hezekiah William Foote (1813–1899), an American Confederate veteran, attorney, planter and politician from Mississippi. His maternal grandfather was a Jewish immigrant from Vienna.

Foote was raised in his father's Episcopal faith. He also sometimes attended synagogue as a child, but says he "never felt Jewish."

Foote moved frequently as his father was promoted within Armour and Company, living in Greenville, Jackson, and Vicksburg, Mississippi; Pensacola, Florida; and Mobile, Alabama. When Foote was five, his father died in Mobile, and his mother moved them back to Greenville. When Foote was 15 years old, he began lifelong friendships with Walker Percy and his brothers. Foote and Percy influenced each other greatly. Additional influences on Foote's writing were Tacitus, Thucydides, Gibbon and Proust.

At Greenville High School, Foote edited the student newspaper, The Pica, and frequently used it to lampoon the school's principal, who in turn exacted revenge by recommending that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill not admit Foote in 1935. Foote was able to gain admission only by passing a round of admission tests.

In 1936, Foote was initiated in the Alpha Delta chapter of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. He often skipped class to explore the library, even spending a night among the shelves. He began contributing pieces of fiction to Carolina Magazine, UNC's award-winning literary journal. Foote returned to Greenville in 1937, where he worked in construction and for a local newspaper, the Delta Democrat Times. During Foote's time at Chapel Hill, his Jewish heritage led to discrimination, an experience that bolstered his later support for the Civil Rights Movement.